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A favorable exchange rate and cheap flights make America good value - but tight...
From a holidaymaker's point of view, the US has the lot: the endless powder-sand beaches of Florida and California; the vast vistas of Yosemite and the Grand Canyon; the brash glitz of Las Vegas and Los Angeles; and the charm of the villages of New England. And this summer it comes with a bonus: exceptional value, for since last year the dollar has fallen by about 20 per cent against the pound.
Air fares are also at bargain levels as airlines, still struggling on transatlantic routes because of 9/11, compete for passengers. Overall, holiday prices have fallen, hotels are cheaper and our money goes further when we're there.
The response from British travelers has been mixed. The sun-and- sand market is struggling, but several operators have reported an increase in sales over recent months, and most of the US specialists have expanded their programs for 2004.
This means a huge choice of holidays, particularly to New England and California. The Deep South, too, is getting more coverage. Arizona, meanwhile, remains attractive for its year-round sunny climate and fantastic scenery. But New York is the favorite - British Airways Holidays predicts it will be its biggest US seller this year.
The drawback is that travelers now face rigorous airport security routines, while the changes to entry requirements have caused considerable confusion.
In the short term, however, few people will be affected by the regulations. If you have a machine-readable passport - the small burgundy one - or if you obtain one before October 25, you won't need a US visa until that passport expires.
So if your passport is in order, what sort of holiday will you choose? After Florida (sun/sand/theme-park breaks), fly-drive holidays are the most popular choice. The range of escorted tours, too, has expanded, with plenty of options in New England, California and the Deep South, as well as imaginative routes taking in historical cities or national parks. The US also offers an exceptional variety of activity trips, from working on a cowboy ranch to whale-watching in Alaska. Thanks to the weak dollar, however, shopping may prove to be the biggest attraction of all.
Prices in this report are per person (sharing a double room), and include flights and accommodation, unless otherwise stated. Where we give two prices, the first is for a week in early June, the second for a week in early August. In some sections we have picked out companies that offer particularly strong, imaginative or good-value programs.
Looking for perfect airline seat? Ask the guru
Author(s): Brad Foss Associated Press
Travel agents and Web sites allow travelers to select a particular seat when they fly, but other than window or aisle, few people have a clue about other options.
Travel experts recommend two easy-to-use Web sites, seatguru.com andseatexpert.com, for details about the best and worst seats, and some in between, on every type of aircraft flown by large carriers.
Seats are rated on such factors as legroom, engine and lavatory noise, how well they recline, underseat storage capacity, view and more.
For example, on American Airlines' Boeing 777-200s, which mainly fly Asian Pacific routes, seats 25 A, B, H and J are rated "bad" by Seatguru, because "you'll hear the lavatory flush all flight long." Seats 31 H and J, meanwhile, are "the best coach seats on the plane with tons of legroom and power ports."
Delta Air Lines also flies Boeing 777-200s, although its planes are configured differently, making row 44 the tops in coach class, despite the lack of a good view, according to Seatguru.
"Most people would be surprised to learn that, even on an airline that has an all-coach configuration, all seats are not the same size," said Randy Petersen, editor of InsideFlyer magazine.
In fact, not all first-class seats are created equally, either.For Northwest Airlines' Airbus 319s, Seatguru says "be aware!" of all seats in row 4, because "only a curtain" seperates them from the coach cabin, which can be noisy. Also, because food service begins in row 1 in the first-class cabin, passengers in row 4 "most likely won't get a meal choice."
Within the coach cabin, the conventional wisdom is that bulkhead and exit seats are the best. But this is not always the case. For instance, on Delta's MD-88s, seats 24 D and E are in an exit row, but "the aging door seals often make the area cold."
Unless you've got a travel agent who knows all the different permutations for seat configurations, which vary by carrier and plane type, experts said it is a good idea to do a little advance research.
The computer reservation systems used by travel agents denote exit and bulkhead seating, but that is where the details end, said Terry Trippler, a travel consultant with Cheapseats.com in Minneapolis. The average travel agent wouldn't know "whether a particular seat doesn't recline," Trippler said.
Internet travel sites show airplane seat configurations and real- time availability, but they do not offer qualitative descriptions.
Of course, landing a plum seat requires more than just the knowledge available at seatguru.com or seatexpert.com, travel experts said.
There are often fewer than a dozen coach-class seats on any given airplane that are considered above-average or better and these are often reserved for first-class or full-fare travelers. That is why on Internet travel sites, which cater to budget-conscious travelers, the premium seats will usually show up as unavailable.
That said, the information available at seatguru.com and seatexpert.com can help travelers avoid unwittingly selecting the worst seats available.
Airbags: Option or necessity?
A married couple are driving along a Motorway doing a steady forty miles per hour. The wife is behind the wheel.
Her husband suddenly looks across at her and in a clear voice says "Darling, I know we've been married for twenty years now but I want a divorce". The wife says nothing, keeps looking at the road ahead but slowly increases her speed to 45 mph.
The husband speaks again. "I don't want you to try and talk me out of it," he says, "I've been having an affair with your best friend, and she's a far better lover than youare." Again the wife stays quiet, but grips the steering wheel more tightly and slowly increases the speed to 55.
He pushes his luck. "I want the house," he says insistently.
She takes the speed up to 60.
"I want the car, too," she takes the car up to 65 mph.
"And," he says, "I'll have the bank accounts and all the credit cards" the car slowly starts veering towards a massive concretebridge. This makes him a wee bit nervous, so he asks her: "Isn't there anything you want?"
The wife at last replies - in a quiet and controlledvoice.
"No, I've got everything I need." she says.
"Oh, really?" he enquires, "So what have you got?"
Just before they slam into the wall at 75 mph, the wife turns to him, smiles and says.... "The airbag."
Back to the future
Once upon a time, a fairy told a married couple: "For being such an exemplary married couple for 35 years, I will give you each a wish."
"I want to travel around the world with my dearest husband", said the wife.
The fairy moved her magic wand and - abracadabra! - two tickets appeared in her hands.
Now it was the husband's turn. He thought for a moment and said: "Well this moment is very romantic, but an opportunity like this only occurs once in a lifetime. So... I'm sorry my love, but my wish is to have a wife 30 years younger than me."
The wife was deeply disappointed but, a wish was a wish. The fairy made a circle with her magic wand and - abracadabra! Suddenly the husband was 90 years old.
Moral: Men are always men...
But fairies are... female.
Which Travel Site Is Best?
Christina Valhouli
When it comes to purchasing travel on the Web, you don't always get what you pay for. Sometimes you get more.
Booking travel online, whether it's for business or personal trips, has exploded in the past few years, as people are turning to the Web for bargain hunting and to have more choice and control over their travel plans. According to Toronto-based travel consultant Visual Frenzy, online travel is the leading and fastest growing category of e-commerce, accounting for more than 45% of all online sales during the third quarter of 2002.
Online travel bookings are forecast to grow from $24 billion (or 11% of all travel bookings) in 2001 to $64 billion (22% of all travel bookings) by 2007. Online hotel bookings are the second largest segment of online travel (after air travel) and are forecast to almost triple from $6.3 billion (9% of all hotel bookings) in 2002 to $17.5 billion (20% of all hotel bookings) in 2005.
More and more businesses are turning to the Web for their corporate bookings as well. According to a May 2003 Accenture poll on business travel, 58% of respondents said they book travel online. This is up from 54% in 2002. Companies such as Expedia and Orbitz--which was founded as a joint venture among Continental Airlines, American Airlines' parent AMR, United's parent UAL, Delta Air Lines and Northwest have created corporate business sections, which essentially means that a company can use the Web site as their in-house travel agency.
This will work better for smaller companies, as employees must still do much of the research themselves. The advantage is that the program combines Orbitz technology with a company's negotiated corporate rates at certain hotels and car rental companies.
One of the biggest bonuses to booking online is that it gives customers more choice and access to such information as flight details, routes and pricing options than was ever possible. Previously, this information was only available to travel agents.
"Online travel sites have had a profound impact on the industry because now there is a transparency to pricing," says PricewaterhouseCoopers lodging consultant Sean Hennessey. "Now it's easier for customers to see all the published prices and use this for comparative shopping." The access to information has wreaked havoc with corporations' relationships with major hotels, says Hennessey, since Internet prices can often beat a company's negotiated contract rate.
Booking online also eliminates travel agent commissions. Most Web sites charge a negligible $5 or $6 processing fee. Web sites are also providing deeper discounts for hotel rooms. By 2005, an estimated one in five hotel bookings will be made online, up from one in 12 in 2002, according to a 2003 Cornell School of Hotel Administration study. Hotels are nervous about third-party bookings because it often translates into lower rates, and they are trying to fight back, says Brian Ferguson, vice president of Hendersonville, Tenn.-based Smith Travel Research.
"To compete against sites such as Hotels.com, hotels are trying to promote their own Web sites for booking rooms," says Ferguson. "It also saves them money because they don't have to pay commissions at call centers." Top of Form
Despite all the complaints emanating from the hotel industry about not being able to keep up with the competition, Ferguson says much of the criticism is unfounded. "There isn't a single rate on the Internet that a hotel didn't agree to," he says.
Ferguson explains that sites such as Expedia are able to offer deep discounts because they approach major chains, such as Marriott, and buy a huge block of rooms at a negotiated price. Hotels are in a bit of catch-22 at the moment, where selling blocks of wholesale rooms to a Web site guarantees "heads in beds" but cuts into profits.
Another concern for the hotel industry, says Hennessey, is that hotels are not able to control their distribution as easily as they have in the past. To fight this, several large hotels, including Hilton, Hyatt and Starwood, have banded together to form the weeks-old TravelWeb.com.
"The advantage for the hotels is that they don't have to pay the commission rates to places like Orbitz," says Hennessey. The "blind bookings" at sites such as Priceline. where you don't find out the name of the hotel until it has been paid for, is also irritating the large hotels. "They feel it is diluting the brand," he says.
Some people who may not be turning to sites such as Cheaptickets.com or Orbitz are those who like to fly discount carriers such as JetBlue or Southwest . While it's possible to find plane tickets for major carriers, such as American, United and Virgin Atlantic, on Web sites such as Orbitz, that is not the case for airlines such as JetBlue, which prefers that customers visit its own Web site.
Another irritating (and somewhat scary) feature we found on deeply discounted sites such as Priceline is that customers have the option of checking off what kind of plane they would like to fly on, such as a "non-jet carrier." Booking a non-jet carrier will usually knock the price of a plane ticket down. Call us old-fashioned, but we prefer to avoid flying on a converted crop duster.
To help you make the most of booking your next trip online, we took a look at the best and worst aspects of the ten most popular Web sites, such as Orbitz, Priceline and Skyauction.com. We judged the sites on ease of use, design, clarity, flexibility and other options available, such as car rentals or hotels.
To compare the sites, we searched for a round-trip ticket from New York to London, as well as Boston to Thessaloniki, Greece. No direct flights exist for the Boston to Thessaloniki route, so we wanted to see how clearly the different Web sites displayed the total flying time and length of layovers. Flexibility and information provided were key. Some of the Web sites do not reveal the flight time and carrier until the ticket is purchased. Sites such as Priceline and Skyauction also automatically bill your credit card if your bid is accepted, so they are not for everyone.
The vast majority of the Web sites are easy to use, but having high-speed Internet connection is essential. What made the best Web sites stand out, such as Orbitz, was that they allowed customers to choose their inbound and outbound flights separately, giving you plenty of choice for choosing flight times. Other sites lump them together.
We were surprised that many Web sites, such as Hotwire and Lowestfare.com, relied on pull-down menus for customer service. If they did publish a phone number, it was buried on the site. First-time users, or those experiencing problems, will find this hugely irritating. Another factor that made searching more difficult was "time lapses." Travelocity will not let users flip back and forth between pages easily; if you stop researching a trip, you must reboot the entire site.
So, which sites did we like best? To be fair, none of the ten sites we included in this roundup could be considered bad. People will come and use them, albeit at different speeds and with varying results, but no one will be ripped off or wind up finding that instead of flying to Portland they are booked through to Pago Pago. Some, of course, were more equal than others, and one or two clearly the class of the field. To find out which site we rank number one, counting down from number ten, please click here.
If your favorite travel Web site is not on our list, please write in and let us know.
Dr. Hassan Sherif